


Radars down

by Scoby



Series: Reylo therapy [8]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Armitage Hux Redemption, Canon Universe, Coruscant reconstruction, During Canon, Engineer Armitage Hux, F/M, First Order Politics (Star Wars), Implied Sexual Content, Kylo Ren Redemption, Kylo Ren fixes radars, Kylo Ren is Not Matt the Radar Technician, Resistance wins, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, but is not Matt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24678589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: He is about to leave back to the command deck when the whole room shakes. Then everything around him tilts and he gets thrown on the floor. He crawls up to the small window and looks outside.The surface of his star destroyer glides past under him. Two X-wings fly above, with cables leading towards the corners of this room. Soon he is faced with only the vast emptiness of space, only the cables and tiny ships looming above.The Resistance has taken him captive by detaching the whole radar control room.
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Armitage Hux, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo therapy [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791079
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Radars down

They become aware of the Resistance attack only when they see it through the command deck windows and hear the first blasts. Kylo turns to choke the officer next to the radar signal screen.

“You had _one_ job. Where was the alarm?”

“Sir, we did not get any signal through the radars. They’re all down”, he wheezes when Kylo slightly loosens his grip.

“Then why don’t you already have a radar technician fixing them?”

“We don’t have any at the moment.”

“Do I have to do it myself!?” Kylo rages, hand tightening around the officer’s throat.

“I’m afraid so, Sir.” His voice is a barely audible rasp.

Kylo storms out of the command deck and through the corridors to the radar control room. He has learned to fix the radars of the Falcon before he learned to read, so he keeps telling himself that he can do it on a star destroyer as well. This whole system is just a lot more… complex. The control panel is the size of a TIE fighter wing, full of buttons and switches and above them a blank signal screen.

He lifts his forearm up in front of him, relaxes and lets the Force guide his hand. It does not even pull his hand towards the control panel but around it, towards its backside. Kylo almost gives up. Can the Force be toying with him and wasting his scarce time? He considers taking his hand back to his own control and figuring it out himself, until his finger hits the power switch behind the panel.

Of course. He presses the switch off and lets the lights on the control panel flick out and the gentle humming of the ventilators stop. Still his finger on the switch, he counts to five before pressing it back on again. The lights and humming are back in a few seconds and with them, also a signal appears on the screen.

It shows a dozen Resistance ships circulating the star destroyer. The First Order fighters are on their tail in at least double the numbers, but the slender X-Wings keep dodging them and doing their little bits of damage here and there.

The sight on the radar screen makes Kylo wonder at the sheer recklessness of the attack. It will only be a question of time before this tiny squadron gets squashed. Even though they were surprised, he is sure Hux knows when to send out reinforcements if their first set of fighters and cannons cannot take out the intruders. He wonders what could be a possible purpose that his mother would approve of sacrificing these pilots for.

He is about to leave back to the command deck when the whole room shakes. Then everything around him tilts and he gets thrown on the floor. He crawls up to the small window and looks outside.

The surface of his star destroyer glides past under him. Two X-wings fly above, with cables leading towards the corners of this room. Soon he is faced with only the vast emptiness of space, only the cables and tiny ships looming above.

The Resistance has taken him captive by detaching the whole radar control room.

The lightsaber is in his hand quicker than he can think and he is about to trash the whole room. But he manages to hold it back, imagining how the void of space would pull the air out if he would make even a tiny hole on the wall. Also, even though the radar screen now only gives a noisy picture from just one side of the detached room, it still represents a tiny bit of additional information available to him about where they might be going. So the equipment here is not worth trashing either.

He sits down, back against the radar control panel and pulls down on his ears as a way to satisfy the craving of torturing something, when the room around him is out of his safe reach. The flight seems to take forever. He walks around the room dozens of times, until he sees a partly exposed chord leaving the lower corner of the control panel.

The insulation has worn out at the point where the chord turns towards the back of the panel. Poking his finger into that spot gives him an electric shock that is painful but still far from knocking him off. Spending his time doing that is a far better option than going crazy sitting still.

He has time to give himself more shocks than he cares to count. The oxygen content in the room starts to run disturbingly low, making him nauseous. When feeling almost ready to faint despite his attempts to keep slapping his head, his attention is drawn by something appearing on the radar screen. Soon he sees it also in the window. They have dived into an asteroid field. The cables holding the room switch chaotically from side to side and the whole room swings as the ships pull it while dodging the asteroids.

They are approaching one so close that he is sure they will hit it and braces for the impact. But right before the hit, they slow down and land on it tolerably softly. Through the window, he sees the X-wings detach their cables and fly away.

In a moment, the door of the room hisses open. The sound makes him instinctively take a deep breath and hold it, sure that the already low amount of oxygen in the room will quickly be gone into the atmosphereless surroundings. But to his astonishment, he sees Rey behind the door, inside a round corridor she has made out of a sturdy fabric and attached around his door.

The seams of the corridor hiss as the air slowly prickles out, so she acts quickly. First comes out her hand that calls Kylo’s lightsaber to her before he can stop it. Then she uses her other hand to signal him to follow. No other choice left, he staggers on her tail through the corridor and into the other ship behind it.

Rey signals him to close the airlock behind him, still not speaking. He has no interest to resist, as also on this side of the corridor, he hears the similar hissing sound of air escaping at the seams. When he touches the airlock handle, even his blurry brain knows that he is at the side airlock that leads to the crew quarters on the Millennium Falcon.

When the airlock is closed and he can finally draw a breath with a satisfactory amount of oxygen, Rey is nowhere to be seen. He breaths the air like it was gaseous gold and holds the wall for support when walking forward to explore the crew quarters. Everything is as he remembers, just even more dusty and looking even more outdated. He quickly gets disinterested in anything else but the door and finding out why he is here.

But the door is completely blocked. He tries with his hands and through the Force, but it refuses to move. Rey has somehow used the Force to block it, creating a make-shift prison out of this place where he used to spend so large part of his childhood.

He sits down on a bunk, waiting again, but not interested in electric shocks anymore. Not now that he has just discovered how luxurious it feels to breath a gas cocktail with full 21% of oxygen again. He sits cross-legged, eyes closed, when Rey returns, closes the door behind her and blocks it again.

“What's this all about, Rey? Why didn’t you just fly into my hangar? I would have sensed you from far away and ordered everyone to let you through, just like last time.”

“Poe needed to do this in style.”

“Dameron? Of course. So this is a Resistance plot after all then.”

“Yes, they are demanding your ransom right now.”

“How much are they asking?”

His voice starts confident, almost taking the situation as a joke, but turns serious and Rey recognises what he is thinking. It brings to her mind the way Leia grieves for every lost Resistance fighter and would do anything in her power to get them all back, and respectively, how devastated they would all be if anything would happen to Leia. It pinches her heart to see him almost convinced that nobody will miss him enough for the First Order to pay anything.

“Not credits. Disarmament of the First Order.”

He hits his forehead with his palm.

“And do you think they’ll succeed? Hux will be making the decision while I’m away, and he has a wicked fixation with this war that lets him try out all his engineering projects. And he certainly doesn't miss me.”

“He has to live with the consequences of his decision, too. According to the intel we've gathered, there are plenty of people in your fleet who are planning to start an uprising if Hux becomes the Supreme Leader. They believe that you're their only hope.”

He weighs her words in silence, wondering if they are true and how many spies there have to be to deliver the Resistance a more complete picture of the First Order dynamics than he has himself. And what do they even mean - is he the only hope of winning the war, or the only hope of surrendering and letting everyone go home? Still, no matter how many hidden supporters he might have, his thoughts still drift back to Hux’s stubbornness with this kind of matters.

“This is not going to go the way you think. He’s not that easy to persuade.”

“Well, that means they'll just have to persuade him longer, which gives us more time.”

To Ben’s astonishment, Rey climbs onto his thighs, rests her knees on the bunk on each side of his hips and places her forearms over his shoulders.

“So, will you fuck me now like you should have done months ago in that red throne room?”

“Didn’t I?”

She takes a sharper inbreath when she remembers the feeling of Ben’s fingers curling inside of her and pressing into her wet flesh, when he moved the Skywalker lightsaber away from Snoke’s body, and everything that happened after.

“Not enough.”

“May I remind you that it was you who stopped me by saying that we should save a fleet of rebels first?”

“I trusted you to save them quickly and then get right back to it.”

“Well, I have been… delayed. So, better get back to it now then, huh?”

He traces his hands over her thighs until he reaches around her butt and pulls her closer. Their foreheads fall together and her fingers start working on opening his belt. But it does not feel the same as in Snoke’s throne room, because something is disturbing him.

“Couldn’t we go anywhere else? Somewhere where it wouldn’t be obvious to me that my parents have done the same right there.”

“Which rules out…”

“…this whole ship, yes.”

Rey sighs deep.

“I have very strict orders to keep you on this asteroid. The closest ships are nearby and they would instantly be on our tail if we’d take off.”

She shifts her weight to start climbing out of his lap but he moves his arms around her back, suddenly holding tighter.

“No, please don’t go.”

He presses their heads next to each other, ear to ear, and hugs her heart against his.

“Never leave me again.”

Rey’s mind gets flooded with reasons why she probably should still leave him many times. But feeling his steady breath, rapidly melting heart and arms that are completely immersed in holding her, she can only say:

“I won’t.”  
  


* * *

  
Poe leans closer to the ear under the ginger hair. His voice drops into a dramatic whisper:

“These are our terms. I suggest you consider them generous.”

Hux responds with a laughter, which the officers around him make an effort to join.

“Why would we even bother? We can easily finish you without Kylo Ren.”

“Can you? How much of the First Order do you think you’ll have behind you? Let me show you a clip.”

Poe clicks a datastick into the holoprojector in the middle of the table. It shows a group of stormtroopers and officers with blurred faces and altered voices, gathered around a holopad and discussing plans for… Hux’s assassination.

He startles and looks around, but nobody’s eyes give them away as being part of the group in the holovid.

“And that’s not all, General", Poe adds. "If you accept quickly, that will make us think that you are actually regretting and have good intentions at heart. In that case, we will offer you a personal deal. You won’t have to do your sentence in a prison or grave, but as the chief engineer in a reconstruction project we're planning on the orbit of Hosnian Prime. We're going to rebuild a whole planet there."

He has walked slowly around Hux's chair and makes another dramatic approach to his other ear:

"Think about it, Huxie. A new Death Star. Except that we call it the Life Star. You can consider it your own life star. Take it, or you’ll have an uprising in your hands.”

Hux tenses his mouth into a thin line, but the closest people can unmistakably see how his eyes light up.

“So tell me… more about that project.”

Poe browses through holograms showing initial designs. The structure of the planet is sketched and targets set for weight, speed and rotation. But there are so many components still waiting for design. The thermal oscillators, the water circulation system, the energy distribution network, the ventilation of the core, the composition of the soil and atmosphere, cycling system for the nutrients, the veins and nodes for traffic. Hux’s mouth opens and his hand moves unconsciously to fiddle with his chin as his mind drifts into guessing when and where the daily peaks in power demand happen and calculating the optimum clustering of solar panels to respond.

When Poe reckons that he has shown enough for the right moment to be at hand, he places a datapad on the table in front of Hux, gently nudges his forearm and points at the spot where he should sign. With shaking hands, he signs.  
  


* * *

  
Rey is still entangled in Ben’s embrace when her comlink buzzes. She detaches herself and sits next to him before she turns it on and a small figure of Poe Dameron appears.

“He did it, Rey! You can set Ren free…”

When his eyes drift to Ben who still keeps clinging to Rey with an arm around her, he adds:

“…if he still wants to go.”

Turning to Ben, he continues:

“Listen, Sir, we’re emptying the star destroyers, so if there are any of your personal belongings you want to pick up, I might suggest that now would be the time. Rey will take you where you want to go.”

When they arrive at the star destroyer, the disarmament is progressing rapidly. Weapons are collected on freighters that take them away for deactivation. Food and medical supplies are collected for transportation to the worlds that have had the most severe shortages due to the war.

Stormtroopers are stripping their armour into giant waste containers where they are crushed. They turn into a group of ordinary people, all dressed in the same long-sleeved black underclothing but each one looking different again.

They pack on troop carriers, and first time in their lives, they can choose the destination. Many of them have no memory of their home planet but go for their favourite places they have seen on their missions. Many choose to go to work for the Life Star project or other various reconstruction efforts initiated by the Resistance.

Rey waits by the door while Ben walks through his quarters and gathers up a few objects into a small bag. He mainly takes practical things like clothes and tools. There is not much from this place that he wants to drag around.

In front of Darth Vader’s mask, he stops and considers. He already puts his thumb through one eye opening, grabs the edge and lifts it up. Only then he remembers another object he has been storing under it. There is Anakin Skywalker’s sonic screwdriver, which Ben found when visiting his old home on Tatooine with his parents. He has forgotten he still has it.

Then everything dawns to him. This is why his grandfather could never help him to fully surrender to the Darkness. He always thought he could absorb clarity by tuning into his legacy, but all he had been doing was absorbing more of the conflict. Now he picks up the screwdriver, packs it in his bag and leaves behind the mask with a relieved outbreath.

When he meets Rey again by the door, the corridor behind is already completely empty. She places her forearms on his shoulders again, this time having to move closer and stretch up to reach there.

“So, this star destroyer is just about empty and your parents have never been here, right?”

Ben slides his hands down her back, leaving them on her butt again, starting to cherish more and more deeply the idea that it is his to hold to his heart's content.

“I want you on the command deck first”, he decides, dives down to scoop under her hips and lifts her up, hanging over his shoulder, head against his back, while holding her legs with an arm behind her knees. Rey screams and laughs as he rushes through he corridors. Once in a while, she lets out an undetermined 'put me down', which he responds to with a slap on the treasured butt next to his head.

**Author's Note:**

> I've recently been in love with the theme of Poe Dameron subtly bossing around the First Order leadership by offering them what they most want. Similar vibes are in [this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24526909)


End file.
